Substrate processing apparatuses have been utilized in the production of a laminated structure of an integrated circuit for the surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter called wafer) which is a substrate, or in the manufacture of FPD (Flat Panel Display) or PV (Photo Voltaic) panel and the like. Such substrate processing apparatuses perform, on a substrate, various kinds of processing such as a film forming process, an etching process, coating of a resist film in a photolithography process, and a development process.
A substrate processing apparatus is adapted to monitor the operating status of the apparatus by an operation display on which information obtained from various sensors provided in the substrate processing apparatus, setting values of control parameters for a process recipe, etc. are displayed.
As one of important information for the monitoring of the operating status of the substrate processing apparatus, there is an alarm to be activated or triggered in the cases of a control parameter falling outside the set range or the sensor having detected an abnormality of the apparatus. This alarm includes information indicating the location of occurrence of the abnormality, its details and like. If the appropriate action responsive to such information is taken, the operating status of the substrate processing apparatus can be kept normal and damage to the substrate processing apparatus can be prevented.
Once an alarm is triggered, in many cases, it will be deactivated from its triggered state by executing a predetermined recovery (restoration) operation. Further, there are cases in which when a plurality of alarms are activated or triggered, in order to prevent oversight of each alarm and failure of the recovery operation, all alarms are displayed in time-series order and so long as the recovery operation necessary for each alarm is not executed the triggered state of all alarms cannot be eliminated.
Examples of substrate processing apparatuses include one in which when one factor for which interlock is applied occurs, the interlock is activated by a plurality of devices in the substrate processing apparatus, so that they are set to stop. In this case, several tens of alarms or more are trigged in a short time. In this case, the alarm that requires the actual treatment is only one alarm for notifying the factor for which the interlock is applied. If this factor is eliminated, the recovery operation necessary for other alarms may be just simple like, for example, an instruction input of “processing continue”, or an instruction input of alarm's “display delete”. Even in such a case, an operator bears a large burden where the recovery operation of each one of several tens of alarms is executed while confirming the same.
There has been described in JPH11-307612A (Paragraphs 0054 to 0055, FIG. 9, etc.), a substrate processing apparatus which displays on an operation display (alarm screen), the time of occurrence of trouble generated during the processing of a substrate or the like, the location of its occurrence and the name of each alarm (warning), and operation buttons (alarm restart button and cancel restart button) that execute the recovery operation corresponding to the type of alarm. A technology for efficiently managing a plurality of alarms has however not been described in JP-A-11-307612.